Vigee frowned. 'What about it?'
'He tried to have me murdered,' I said.
'I knew it,' said Kestner.
Vigee nodded at the door. 'Outside,' he told me. 'I need to speak with you.'
I followed him out of the wine cellar, up the stairs and into the little walled garden by the canal. Vigee lit us each a cigarette.
'Paul Kestner, huh?'
I nodded. 'I imagine the UN War Crimes Commission will be pleased to have him in custody,' I said.
'You think I give a fuck about any of that?' he said angrily. 'How many fucking Jews he killed. I don't care. I don't care about Treblinka, Gunther. Or the fate of some lousy gypsies. They're dead. Too bad. It's not my problem. What I do care about is finding Edgard de Boudel. Got that? What I care about is finding the man who tortured and murdered almost three hundred Frenchmen in Indo-China.' He was shouting now and waving his arms in the air, but he didn't grab me by the lapels, and I sensed that while he might have been angry and disappointed he was also wary of me now.
'So, we're going back to that refugee camp at Friedland tomorrow and we're going to look at every man there and we're going to find de Boudel. Understand?'
'It's not my fault that he's not our man,' I shouted back.
'But it was the right call. And, assuming your information is correct and de Boudel really was on that fucking train, then it stands to reason he's in the camp.'
'You'd better pray he is, or we're both in trouble. It's not only your ass, it's mine, too.'
I shrugged. 'Maybe I'll do that.'
'What?'
'Pray. Pray to get out of this place for a while. To get away from you, Emile.' I shook my head. 'I need some room to breathe. To clear my head.'
He seemed to control himself and then nodded. 'Yes. I'm sorry. It's not your fault, you're right. Look, take a walk around town. Go to church again. I'll send someone with you.'
'What about him? Kestner?'
'We'll take him back to the refugee camp. The German authorities can decide what to do with him. But me, I don't have any time for the UN and their stupid War Crimes Commission. I don't want to know about it.'
Muttering in French, he walked off, probably before one us felt obliged to try to hit the other again.
I found Grottsch, who, to my surprise, tried to excuse the Frenchman with the explanation that his daughter was ill. We collected our coats and went outside into the autumn sunshine. Gottingen was full of students, which served to remind me that my own daughter, Dinah, was probably in her first year of university by now. At least I hoped she was.
Walking around a bit, Grottsch and I found ourselves beside the ruins of the town's synagogue on Obere- Masch Strasse, burnt to the ground in 1938, and I wondered how many of Gottingen's Jews had met their ends in Treblinka at the hands of Paul Kestner and if nine years in a Russian POW camp really was sufficient punishment for three quarters of a million people. Perhaps there was after all no earthly punishment that was equal to a crime like that. But if not here on earth, then where?
Our footsteps took us back to St Jacobi's church. Outside I stopped to look in the window of a shop opposite, but when I walked away I found I was alone. I stopped and glanced around, expecting to see Grottsch coming towards me, but he was nowhere to be seen. For a moment I considered escape. The prospect of visiting Friedland refugee camp and being seen by Bingel and Krause was no more appealing than it had been the previous day; and about the only thing that prevented me walking straight to the railway station was a lack of money and the knowledge that my French passport was back at the Pension Esebeck. I was still debating my next course of action when I found I was closely accompanied by two men wearing neat little hats and short dark raincoats.
'If you're looking for your friend,' said one of the men, 'he had to sit down and rest. On account of the fact that he suddenly felt very tired.'
I was still looking around for Grottsch, as if I really cared what happened to him, when I realised that there were two more men behind me.
'He's sleeping it off in the church.' The man speaking had good German but it wasn't his first language. He wore heavy- framed glasses and was smoking a metal-stemmed pipe. He puffed and a cloud of tobacco smoke obscured his face for a moment.
'Sleeping it off?'
'A hypodermic shot. Nothing to worry about. Not for him and not for you, Gunther. So relax. We're your friends. There's a car around the corner waiting to take us on a little ride.'
'Suppose I don't want to go for a ride?'
'Why suppose anything of the kind when we both know that's exactly what you want? Besides, I'd hate to have to give you a shot like your friend Grottsch. The effects of thiopental can linger unpleasantly for several days after injection.' He had my arm now and his colleague had the other and we were already turning the corner onto Weender Strasse. 'A new life awaits you, my friend. Money, and a new identity, a new passport. Anything you want.'
The door of a large black saloon swung open ahead of me. A man wearing a leather jacket and a matching cap was standing behind it. Another man walking a few steps ahead of me stopped by the car door and turned to face me. I was being kidnapped and by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
'Who are you?' I asked.
'Surely you've been expecting us,' said the man beside me. 'After your note.' He grinned. 'You can't imagine the excitement your information has caused. Not just here in Germany, but at headquarters, too.'
I bent forward to get into the car and felt someone's hand on the top of my head, just in case at the last moment I tried to resist and bumped my head on the door frame. Cops and spies all over the world were always thoughtful like that. Two men outside the car stayed on the alert, looking around nervously until everyone who was supposed to be in the car was in the car, and then the doors were closed and we were moving and it was all over, with no more fuss than if we were all going on an unexpected shopping trip to the next town.
After a few minutes I saw that we were driving west and breathed a sigh of relief. At least now I knew who was kidnapping me and why.
'Just sit back and enjoy the journey, my friend. From here on in, you're five star all the way. Those are my orders, Gunther, old buddy. I'm to treat you like a very important person.'
'That will make a pleasant change from when I was last a guest of you Americans,' I said. 'Frankly, there was something about it I didn't like.'
'And what was that?'
'My cell.'
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: GERMANY, 1954
Two and a half hours later we were in Frankfurt and heading across the Main into the north of the city. Our destination was an enormous, curving, honey-coloured marble office building with six square wings that lent the place a quasi- military aspect, as if any minute the clerks and secretaries inside might abandon their typewriters and comptometers and man some anti-aircraft guns on the flat roofs. I hadn't ever been there but I recognised it from old newsreels and picture magazines. Completed in 1930, the Poelzig Ensemble or Poelzig Complex had been the largest office building in Europe and the corporate headquarters of the I.G. Farben conglomerate. This former model of German business and modernity had been the centre for Nazi wartime research projects relating to the creation of synthetic oil and rubber, not to mention Zyklon B, the lethal gas used in death camps. It was now the headquarters of the US High Commissioner for Germany (the HICOG) and, it now seemed, the Central Intelligence Agency.
The car passed through a couple of military checkpoints before we parked and entered a temple-like portico. Behind this were some bronze doors and on the other side a capacious hallway with a large American
